Photo Credit: Alexander Bernhardt Bloom
by Alexander Bernhardt Bloom | alex@queensledger.com
For the Museum of the Moving Image, Juneteenth is not a day off. This month marked the third year since the holiday was adopted as a federally-observed one, and while banks and post offices and public schools on its neighboring Astoria avenues and in the rest of the city closed their doors, the Museum of the Moving Image flung them open wider than usual.
It was the third edition of the museum’s special event on the holiday, which commemorates a key moment in the emancipation of enslaved Black Americans and the end of slavery in the US, and the staff there used the opportunity to continue to explore ways to best celebrate and observe the United States’ most recently declared national holiday.
On Wednesday, visitors watched performances of traditional African dance and expressive contemporary ballet. They listened to traditional African drumming and danced to an R&B-focused vinyl session from a Bronx DJ collective. They screened historical films and heard from panels of scholars and created digital artworks and ate empanadas.
For Tiffany Joy Butler, Associate Curator of Public Programs for the Museum, the diverse medley of programming makes sense for a holiday which draws on many traditions and has several layers of meaning.
“It is important to remember that this is a cultural celebration of our African heritage,” she said, explaining the inclusion of the traditional drums and dancing in Wednesday’s events, and pointing out also that these kinds of performing arts traditions have often comprised a part of Juneteenth celebrations in Black communities in the American South, where Juneteenth has been celebrated for generations without federal endorsement. Including them here today is “a way to remember our roots, to remember that we are descendents of Africa.”
As head of programming for the Juneteenth celebration, Butler was determined to include other parts of the Black American experience too, and examine the way they have been portrayed in American movies historically. For this, she cued up two films from the 1940’s from Director Spencer Williams, both shot in Texas – where the Juneteenth holiday has its origins – and produced independently with all Black casts and crews to be viewed, essentially, by all-Black audiences in the segregated South. The choice of the films was a departure from selections from the past two years which included the cult-classic, The Wiz, and a Disney animated film, this year’s emphasis on bringing forward undertold stories which are a part of our national history very much in line with the spirit of the holiday in observance.
This is a mission for the MoMI which exists beyond the Juneteenth celebrations, explains Education Director Leonardo Santana-Zubieta: “Museums tend to portray dominant stories curated by a very specific curatorial lens. With events like these, the focus is to give visibility and to amplify certain legacies and culture and background and voices.”
Part of how MoMI is doing that is by welcoming residents from the surrounding neighborhoods in the city’s most diverse borough into the museum in ways that should make them feel seen and at home.
“MLK Day, Welcome Ramadan, Juneteenth, Day of the Dead,” explained Santana-Zubieta, are some of the many family and community engagement events, “meant to bring the communities together and also celebrate the space of the museum in a way that is not a traditional museum experience.”
Movies were screening in the adjacent auditorium and visitors continued to stream in and out of the museum’s open doors, and a few floors up, children with virtual reality goggles affixed to their faces used digital wands to design objects in an imagined landscape. Their prompt was: “What does a free world look like in the future?”
There are plenty of federal holidays when the right thing to do is to take off, enjoy a moment of repose, barbecue or watch blockbusters. The Juneteenth programming at the MoMI was, finally, a good reminder that some of our nation’s honored days are better spent on.
Photo Credit: Alexander Bernhardt Bloom
Photo Credit: Alexander Bernhardt Bloom
Photo Credit: Alexander Bernhardt Bloom
Contemporary Ballet in the MoMI rotunda.
Photo Credit: Alexander Bernhardt Bloom
Photo Credit: Alexander Bernhardt Bloom
Photo Credit: Alexander Bernhardt Bloom
Edge School of the Arts with LIFE Camp drummers, in partnership with Eagle Academy, perform traditional dance and drumming in the MoMI courtyard.
Photo Credit: Alexander Bernhardt Bloom
Photo Credit: Alexander Bernhardt Bloom
Tiffany Joy Butler, Associate Curator of Public Programs, introduces the event’s film screening.
Photo Credit: Alexander Bernhardt Bloom
Inside the MoMI Media Lab.
Photo Credit: Alexander Bernhardt Bloom
MoMI Education Director Leonardo Santana-Zubieta: Holiday events, “meant to bring the communities together and also celebrate the space in a way that is not a traditional museum experience.”
Photo Credit: Alexander Bernhardt Bloom
